


Legends

by bentleys



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bentleys/pseuds/bentleys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War has seen hundreds of men like him and she will see hundreds more, but somehow she’s strangely fascinated with the young king rising in the west.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legends

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the [2012 Good Omens Holiday Exchange,](http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/148524.html) for [pasiphile.](http://pasiphile.livejournal.com/)
> 
> warnings: sexual content, violence

War has seen hundreds of men like him and she will see hundreds more, but somehow she’s strangely fascinated with the young king rising in the west. She knew his father, that old bastard, and she’s danced to dark hymns with his mother, but he is something else. _The stuff of legends,_ she thinks.   _Conqueror of the world, even._

\--

Alexander is coming from his new city of Alexandria, the kohl still painted in sticky lines around his eyes. She was there, desert sands sifting through her toes. She has stood in every empire under God’s sun.

The king is young, clean-shaven, long-haired—nothing like his father, but there is something of his mother in his eyes, her sense of divinity, maybe. His blood boils hot beneath his skin, pushing upwards to paint the yellow-pink of his flesh red.  She is as tall as he is; her own skin the color of young Oak. Her hair looks henna-dyed but the deep red runs from her roots.

She has ridden with them from the city. When she tightens the muscles in her legs her horse moves beneath her and the men around her feel a prickling in their spines. They turn on one another, voices adding to the cacophony of movement. She smiles, twitches her ankle, and brings the beast to a gallop, racing through the hordes unhindered as a knife.

\--

She walks to Alexander’s tent, parting the crowd like Moses and his red sea. The army stares up at her with bleary eyes; in the distance, she hears shouts.

The guard slumped against a well-worn post makes to draw his sword on her, so she slides her dagger (ornate, Persian) a few inches from its sheath.

“I’m here to see the king,” she says.

His sword arm drops to his side. She walks in.

Alexander is sprawled over the blankets atop his cot, feet tangled amongst them.  He’s reading a letter, brow pulled tight in concentration. There’s another man draped over his shoulder, hands gripping Alexander’s forearms, his own mouth too forming the words.

She studies them both for a moment, shifting her weight from one hip to another.  She’s always been fond of that first minute of waiting.

“What are you doing in my tent,” Alexander says after a short time. It’s not even a question the way he says it, stretching as he yawns out the words. The other man— _Hephaestion,_ she thinks—looks up, startled. His hand starts towards the dagger tied around his thigh, but Alexander’s hand stops him.

“No,” Alexander says shortly, raising his eyes to stare at her. “Leave us.”

Hephaestion stares at War for a moment, lips slightly open, as if he’s trying to figure her out, trying to understand the strange blood rising within him, the sudden new thirst for violence. _Foolish_ , she thinks, _but brave._

She gives him a tiny grin, sickly smooth and just a little bit feral. Hephaestion blinks and leaves without looking back at Alexander.

War walks up and stands in front of Alexander. She tilts her head.

“You must be the one causing all the trouble with my men,” Alexander says, his voice light. He’s meeting her eyes, but it’s obvious he isn’t used to people standing over him. This amuses her.

She says nothing.

“ _Deshr,”_ Alexander says slowly, rolling the foreign word around his mouth. “That’s what they call you, yes? Or they did, in Alexandria.”

She throws her head back and laughs, scarlet strands of hair whipping across her face. “You can call me ‘Red,’ if that’s more comfortable.”

“I don’t think so. You don’t look Greek,” he says, eyes roving over the curves of her shoulders, her hips.

She cocks her head again. “You’re _not,_ ” she says sweetly.

He shrugs his shoulders back. “True. What do you want, ‘Red’?”

“Only to introduce myself,” she says. “And to get a good look at you.”

His eyes are dark, contemplative. “Do you like what you see?”

“You won’t last long,” she says shortly. “But I like you better than Philip.”

He grins, openmouthed, at that. His teeth are still bared at her as she turns to leave.

\--

It’s in autumn when the men whisper _eclipse_ to one another and she strides to Alexander’s tent, her whole body thrumming with excitement. They all know that battle is in their forecast, and she is ready, every cell in her body pulled tight, expectant.

Alexander is waiting for it too, his armor and weapons spread all around him. He is like all who fancy themselves leaders—pretending to be unafraid, sometimes pretending with such ferocity that is starts to come true.

He is so cocky that he grips her face in his hands and kisses her. She lets him; she can feel the tension in his bones, his yearning for a fight that is like a single drop against her waves of it.

She knows he will not last, and she wants a taste of him before he disappears, becomes old or corrupt or dead. She hooks a slender hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him back, opening wide for his tongue. He wriggles up against her, need and desire in the curve of him.

The king doesn’t see the sky that night, can’t whisper superstitions with his army. He is too busy being taken inside of the dark woman with the red hair who followed them from Egypt, the woman with bloodshed as her trail.

He hisses and moans and squirms and rips at her with his nails. She lets him slice her, pressing bruises of her own into his sweet-scented shoulders.

They push and pull and mesh against each other, panting in each other’s faces and murmuring their own words under their breath.

He fucks like any warrior, which is important. She needs the blood and anger more than she needs the actual sex, and she thinks perhaps so does he. He comes with a gasp, the orgasm rising up out of him and making her own body shiver in pleasure.

She watches him after they are both done, his body spread wide over the fabrics of his bedding. His eyes slide open and shut, succumbing to his mortal need. She holds his eyelids closed and waits for his breathing to even out in sleep.

War adjusts the fine muslin of her dress and stands. She goes to watch the eclipse, the planet’s shadow reddening the heavenly body above her head.

She purses her lips and goes to tend to her horse. The last one was better.

\--

She sees Alexander next in the midst of battle. The air is heavy, weighed down by the scent of blood, metal, sweat. Persians and Greeks alike are screaming their pain and terror onto the battlefield; death is on the wind and they can all feel it, but it just makes them fight all the more harder, their needs pushing up against each other as much as their swords are.

She doesn’t have a sword, hasn’t had hers for a long time. It’ll be _ages_ before she sees it again.

She sits high atop her horse and watches the bodies fall around her. She closes her eyes, hearing the sounds of metal cutting flesh, of bones breaking, of a hundred men’s last breaths.

She inhales, deep.

\--

The final time War sees Alexander he is beside himself in bereavement. Hephaestion is dead, and he stares up her with bloodshot eyes, his long hair in golden-brown clumps on the floor, the knife he sheared it off with still clutched in his fist. He lunges towards her for a brief moment—she thinks perhaps that he mistook her for his mother.

 _Pity,_ she thinks as she stares down at the mess of a man. She knew this would happen, of course, as it's happened to all of the people of power she's known before, and as it will happen to all those who will come after Alexander. He's young for it, but then so were they.

She kneels down and lets him see who she is. “You fought a good battle,” she murmurs, cupping her hand around his jaw, untrimmed stubble pricking at her flesh.

His eyes slide closed and he laughs, the sound painful and harsh in his throat. “You say that like it’s over.”

“I think we both know you won’t last much longer.” She isn’t being cruel. It’s just that one gets tired of grief, eventually. There’s no room for mourning on the battlefield, and she’s always known that this king could only accept that for so long. _Like another brave hero,_ she thinks.

Alexander drags himself into a seated position, his face going slack. “You underestimate me, _Deshr._ I have an empire to run.”

She smirks at his use of the name the people of the desert gave her, the first name he ever called her. She thinks perhaps he guessed her true name a long time ago.

She raises her hands in defeat. “Indeed you do. Just remember that you chose glory over long life, my little Achilles.”

His hand goes to his shaved head, dirtied fingers running over the messy hairs. He does not seem to appreciate the parallel now that it has played out almost to its entirety.

She looks him in the eye and he is only able to hold her orange-red gaze for few seconds before he pulls away. The weakness is almost sickening, and very mortal.

She presses forward and kisses him; a good-bye, a farewell song for an old friend, for one king of many. The red paste on her lips comes off on his, and on his mouth it looks like blood.

She stands, stretching her long legs in front of her. She folds her hand at him in farewell, and takes her leave.

Once in the open air, she takes a look around. She’s got places to be; the only questions are _where next?_ And _with whom?_

After all, there’s a war on. There’s _always_ a war on.


End file.
